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Autodesk Announces 10-Year Anniversary Release of Maya Software New Release Provides Stereoscopic Production Capabilities, nParticles Simulation, and Powerful Animation and Productivity Tools

At SIGGRAPH 2008, Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) announced Autodesk Maya 2009 3D animation and visual effects software, in celebration of the software's 10-year anniversary. Maya 2009 includes a host of advancements in modeling, animation, rendering and effects that maximize productivity, optimize workflows, and provide new creative possibilities. Maya 2009 will be showcased at the Autodesk booth (#501) during SIGGRAPH 2008, at the Los Angeles Convention Center Aug. 12-14.

"We are celebrating the work done with Autodesk Maya over the past 10 years by many artists and creative visionaries in film, television production and games, as well as in industrial design and architecture." said Marc Petit, Autodesk's Media & Entertainment senior vice president. "We designed Maya 2009 as a tribute to creative innovation and production efficiency. The new release will allow artists to raise the bar and deliver even more ground breaking computer graphics work."

Mike Romey, senior technical director at Zoic Studios was a beta tester for Maya 2009. "The future of Maya is shining brightly with the upcoming release," said Romey. "Autodesk Maya 2009 will change the way artists think about dynamics, rendering, compositing and pipelines. With the solid mental ray multi-render pass workflow, production will be far more effective. This new workflow will optimize render times for multiple render layers and, in turn, elevate the quality of work. The creation of nParticles builds on the unified dynamics engine introduced in nCloth, allowing for greater integration of advanced effects."

Whats new in Maya 2009

New Selection Paradigm
Powerful new selection features in Maya 2009including true soft selection, and pre-selection highlightingmean fewer mouse clicks, and less trial and error for common tasks.

Render Pass Enhancements
A completely updated Render Pass feature set provides precise control over render output, making it easier to optimize integration with compositing packages such as Autodesk Toxik software.

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Super Detail List from Corey's Blog:

Assets:

Assets are a new feature based on the existing container functionality. With assets, you can encapsulate a set of nodes in a container node and publish attributes from these internal nodes to the container. You can flag containers as a certain type and then use those types to limit what assets a specific artist can see using Views.

Assets promote encapsulation of data and black box design.

Once you have set up a container, you can save an XML template of its published attributes. Using these container templates, you can pre-plan all assets and their required attributes for your production.

Within a template, you can define multiple views that set up the user interface for the container. Artists can then use an assigned view as they create assets and bind their published attributes to the template.

Preselection Highlight:

This feature provides a visual cue about the component that your mouse cursor is pointing to by highlighting the component in a different color.You can turn Preselection Highlight on and off by selecting Window > Settings/Preferences > Preferences and then Preselection Highlight in the Selection section.

Enhanced reflection:

Reflection is now supported for the select tool. Additionally, reflection for all tools has been enhanced with additional options to give you more control of the seam.

Heat Map Display:

You can now color nodes in the Hypergraph according to their performance in various metrics. This allows you to quickly identify computationally expensive nodes just by looking at the Hypergraph.

Transfer Attribute Values:

You can now copy or transfer commonly named attributes between two objects using the Transfer Attribute Values option. You can also use this feature to copy incoming connections and outgoing connections which is useful for copying animation from one object to another.

Panel toolbar:

You can now readily access many of the frequently used items that exist within the panel menus by using the panel toolbar. The panel toolbar rests below the panel menu in each view panel. You can toggle view the panel toolbar by pressing + + M.

Multi-component selection mode:

You can now select faces, vertices and edges without having to change between selection modes. By selecting the new Multi selection mode, you can select components based on the mouse cursors proximity to them.

Camera-based selection:

Camera based selection limits the components you can select to those which are unobstructed from the viewpoint of the current camera. This allows you to streamline selection so that you dont accidentally choose components that are hidden from your view, especially when viewing a scene in shaded mode.

Drag select:

Drag select provides you with a new way to select groups components quickly and easily. Like the Paint Select Tool, it allows you to select components by moving mouse along a surface.

Moveable marquee select:

You can now reposition a marquee select without redrawing the marquee by holding the key while dragging the marquee with the left mouse button.

Channel Box Enhancements:

The Channels menu has now been divided into the Channels and Edit menus. In addition, new filtering options are now available in the Show menu to help you manage the attributes and objects that appear in the Channel Box. You can now filter by attribute types, or create your own filter types.

Transform tool marking menus:

You can now access some transform tool specific features from a marking menu by holding CTRL + SHIFT + RMB.

Merge connections:

You can now condense multiple connections from one node to another in the Hypergraph into a single bolded connection between the two nodes. This can greatly simplify the display.

Archive scene:

You can now archive your scene and all its dependencies into a single zip file with the Archive Scene command. This is useful to ensure scenes work correctly when transferred between artists.

Customer Involvement Program:

When you start Maya 2009 for the first time, the Customer Involvement Program (CIP) dialog box appears. The CIP collects information to help Autodesk learn how you use Maya. Your participation in the CIP helps design new features and helps improve existing features. You can choose to participate or stop participating at any time by opening the Customer Involvement Program dialog box in the Help menu.

Soft Selection:

Soft Selection lets you include a weighted falloff area in your component selections. Its useful for sculpting a smooth object or making smoothly integrated slopes or contours to your model without having to transform each vertex manually.

You can turn on Soft Selection in the Tool Settings editor for any of the transformation tools.

Merge Vertex Tool:

You can now merge vertices quickly with the Merge Vertex Tool by dragging from one vertex to another.

You can access the Merge Vertex Tool by selecting Edit Mesh > Merge Vertex Tool.

Smooth UV Tool:

You can now interactively relax or unfold a selection of UVs in the UV Texture Editor with the Smooth UV tool. This allows you to perform these operations by dragging the mouse and offer instant visual feedback so you can judge exactly how much you want to relax or unfold.

Poly Count Options window:

You can now choose to display a polygon count of either the objects in your scene or their cages.

Tweak mode:

Tweak mode lets you quickly move components under the mouse cursor regardless of whether you are currently using the Select Tool, Move Tool, Rotate Tool or Scale Tool.

You can activate Tweak mode by holding on the keyboard and simultaneously dragging a component with .

Enhanced loop selection:

You can now select edge loops by double-clicking a single edge or select face and vertex loops by selecting a face or vertex and double-clicking a face or vertex next to it.

Convert polygon edges to curve:

You can now convert a path of polygon edges to a NURBS curve by selecting Modify > Convert > Polygon Edges to Curve.

Normal Average component movement:

This option lets you select multiple components or objects and move them all along the average of their combined normals.

UV Texture Editor snapping improvements:

You can now use snapping in the UV Texture Editor to lock your transformations to existing objects in the scene. You can also access a number of options related to pixel snapping by selecting Image > Pixel Snap > in the UV Texture Editor.

You can also use Discrete Rotate and Discrete Scale to rotate and scale UVs in specific increments.

UV Layout enhanced options:

A number of new options have been added to the UV Layout Options window, which allow you to adjust multiple UV shells in a single UV space more easily. These options also allow you to offset your UV shells and scale them in the UV space.

Preserve textures during transformation:

You can now transform components of a mesh without warping its texture. By turning on the Preserve UVs option in the Tool Settings editor for any of the transformation tools, Maya will automatically perform the appropriate transformations to the UV shell to maintain the overall look of the texture.

Bevel inside curves:

You can now bevel within the bounds of a curve by turning on the Bevel inside curves option in the Bevel Plus Options window. Beveling inside a curve gives you more precise control over the overall size of a bevelled surface.

Animation layers:

There is now a third editor in the Channel Box that lets you work with layers of animation. The Animation Layer Editor gives you all of the tools and options you need to create and manipulate animation layers.

Animation layers let you create and blend multiple levels of animation in a scene. You can create layers to organize new keyframe animation, or to keyframe on top of existing animation without overwriting the original curves.

Bake Simulation options:

New options for animation layers have been added to the Bake Simulation Options. You can use these options, such as Smart Bake, to specify how you want to bake animation layers.

Maya Muscle:

Maya now includes the powerful Maya Muscle skin deformer, which provides you with a complete set of tools for muscle rigging and deformation effects. To learn more, see Introducing Maya Muscle. The following sections summarize the new features provided by Maya Muscle:

Muscle creation: Maya Muscle provides you with streamlined muscle creation workflows using the Muscle Builder or Muscle Creator. These tools let you quickly and intuitively create, sculpt, and orient muscles in order to create convincing character rigs. Using the Muscle Creator window, you can create muscles by growing them out to a surface, mirror muscles from one side of a character to the other, and control the muscle shape at different phases of contraction.

Skin deformation: The main Muscle deformer lets you set up muscle and skin deformation, but it can also be used as a standalone deformer. To use the Muscle deformer as a skin solution for Sticky or Sliding weights, you can quickly apply default weights, then paint weights on the mesh when you need a higher level of detail. You can also mirror weights from one side of a symmetrical mesh to the other.

Re-use an existing skin set up: If you already have a rig set up with skin clusters, you can use Maya Muscle to add detail without re-creating your existing skin to joint weighting. Muscles Relative Sticky mode lets you use your existing skin cluster setup and focus your efforts only on areas that benefit from additional muscle and skin detail.

Along with the main muscle/skin deformation tools, Maya Muscle provides several standalone deformers that can be used for any number of deformation effects. For example:

• Simulate effects based on natural forces like wind and gravity using the Force deformer. See Force deformation.
• Create high quality, detailed displacement and sliding effects based on curves or a 2D image map using the displacement options. See Displacement deformation and rendering.
• Set up Jiggle effects directly on each point of your skin mesh. See Per-Point Jiggle deformation.
• Apply Relax and Wrinkle effects to a mesh. See Relax deformation and Smooth deformation.

Skin Collision: Several skin collision features let you simulate realistic skin collision effects. Smart Collision, Self Collision, and Multi-Collision give you options for controlling muscle and skin shapes when collisions occur. See Collision to learn more, or refer to the following topics:

Wrap deformer:

Auto Weight Threshold option. A new wrap deformer option (Create Deformers > Wrap > ) automatically sets the optimal weight of the wrap influence objects shapes. See Auto Weight Threshold.

Volume Axis Curve:

With Fields, you can now define an axis field region around a NURBS curve by creating a volume axis curve. Volume axis curves let you move particles and nParticles in various directions along the curve. When working with volume axis curves, you can now create a ramp to scale curve section radius along the curves axis.

Volume Trapping:

Fields now include volume trapping attributes, which allow objects to be trapped inside volume fields. Volume trapping works with all volume shapes including cubes, spheres, cylinders, and volume axis curves.

Axial Magnitude:

You can now create a ramp to scale field Magnitude along the axis of a volume shape field or volume axis curves.

nCaching fluids:

Fluid caching is now done through nCaching, the Maya caching system used to cache nCloth simulation data. nCaching fluids improves caching performance, as well as uses a more efficient storage method for your cached files. As with the previous fluids caching, you can specify which fluid properties are saved in the cache file.

Improved fluid to polygon mesh conversions:

The quality and speed of the fluid output mesh (that results from fluid to polygon conversion), as well as the interactive display of surface fluids have been greatly improved. New Output Mesh attributes allow you can control the resolution, smoothness, and speed of your fluid to polygon mesh conversions.

nCloth force fields:

nCloth now includes Force Field Generation attributes. Force fields generated by nCloth can repel and attract nParticle objects and other nCloth objects. Force Fields are defined by the magnitude of the force field, as well as by the distance from the field generating object that the field is active. Passive collision objects can also generate force fields.

Stickiness:

nCloth now includes a Stickiness attribute. Using Stickiness, you can adjust the tendency of your nCloth object to stick to other Nucleus objects (nCloth, nParticles, and passive objects) when they collide. Passive collision and nParticle objects also have Stickiness.

Convert nCloth output space:

You can now convert the space of your nCloth output mesh to either world space or local space, depending on whether your nCloth was created for Local Space Output or World Space Output.

New particle generation system:

There is a new particle generation system called Maya nParticles in Maya 2009. nParticles use Maya Nucleus , which is the same dynamic simulation framework that generates nCloth simulations. As part of the Nucleus system, nParticles interact and collide with nCloth and passive collision objects, as well as with other nParticle objects. You can use nParticles with Nucleus-based nConstraints to create particle effects and dynamic simulations that cannot be achieved with Maya classic particles. Like other Nucleus objects, nParticle objects are assigned to a Nucleus solver which calculates the nParticle simulation in an iterative manner.

In addition to Nucleus-based dynamics, nParticles can be used in place of Maya classic particles for particle goals, geometry instancing, and sprite effects. nParticles can also be manipulated by external non-Nucleus forces, including gravity and wind.

nParticle collisions:
When nParticles objects are created, they are automatically capable of colliding with nCloth objects, passive objects, and other nParticle objects. With collisions between nParticles and nCloth, you can use the force of emitted nParticles to drive nCloth deformations. For example, you can create an nParticle rain effect with droplets that fall onto and deform the material of an nCloth umbrella. nParticles can self-collide, meaning that nParticles generated from the same nParticle object can collide and interact with each other. nParticle collisions can only occur between nParticles and nCloth or passive objects that are members of the same Maya Nucleus system.

nParticle constraints:
You can use nConstraints to control the behavior of individual or emitted nParticles by restricting the particles movement or by attaching the nParticle object to other Nucleus objects. For example, you can constrain nParticles to an animated nCloth or passive object so that particle splatter, fire, or smoke effects move with the object. nParticles can be constrained using Transform, Component to Component, Point to Surface, Slide on Surface, and Force Field constraints.

Internal per particle attribute ramps:
nParticles objects have internal per particle attribute ramps created on the nParticleShape node. The internal ramps simplify the workflow of setting per particle radius, mass, color, opacity, and incandescence. nParticle internal ramps work the same way as Maya texture ramps, but provide additional control for setting ranges of input values and randomized multipliers for output values.

The internal ramps per particle attributes can be deleted from the nParticle object when you want to set per particle attributes using expressions.

Generate force fields with nParticles:
nParticles provide Force Field Generation attributes that allow you to generate force fields that repel and attract nCloth objects and other nParticle objects. nPartice force fields are defined by the magnitude of the force field as well as distance, which is the distance from the field generating object that the field is active.

Liquid simulation with nParticles:
nParticles provide Liquid Simulation attributes that allow you to create nParticle objects that look and behave like liquids. Control over liquid properties, such as viscosity, allow you to create effects that range from fast moving waterfalls to slow rolling lava flows.

nParticle to polygon mesh conversion:
Static and emitted Blobby Surface nParticles can be converted to polygon meshes. nParticle output meshes can be edited and manipulated like any other polygon. Before the conversion, you can use the Output Mesh attributes to set the quality of resulting polygon mesh. nParticle output meshes are useful for creating smooth flowing surfaces for realistic liquid simulation effects.

Multi-render passes for mental ray for Maya:

The new multi-render pass feature provides an easy workflow for configuring render passes. You can render an unlimited number of render passes, and you can group them into render pass sets. You can also select a subset of the objects or lights in your scene to contribute to each render pass. This subset is called a render pass contribution map.

Using the multi-render pass feature, you can reduce the need to use render layers, thus reducing compute times for scene translation and actual rendering. If you work with complex multi-layered compositions, rendering may also be several times faster. Multi-render passes also allow you perform scene segmentation at render time.

Setting up your scene to use multi-render passes is simple. Follow these steps:

• Use the Create Render Passes window to create your render passes.
• Use the Passes tab under the Render Settings window to create and manage the render passes for each layer.
• Use the renderPass Attribute Editor to set the options for each render pass.

For advanced users, you can also:

• Use either the Render Layer Editor or the Passes tab to create your render pass contribution maps, then use the Passes tab to manage the render passes for each map.
• Group your render passes into render pass sets. Use the Passes tab to create a render pass set and the Relationship Editor (select Window > Relationship Editors or click in the Passes tab) to manage its membership.

mental ray Render Settings re-organization:

The mental ray tab in the Render Settings window is now divided into 5 mental ray tabs, including: Passes, Features, Quality, Indirect Lighting, and Options, providing better organization for the mental ray controls. For example, if you need to tweak your final gather settings, you can simply go to the Indirect Lighting tab.

IPR improvements for mental ray for Maya:

This section lists the IPR improvements for mental ray for Maya:

Light manipulation improvements for mental ray include:

* Area light changes: switching from a Maya to mental ray area light, shape type changes, changing of High Samples and Low Samples
* Deletion of lights
* Changes to light photon attributes such as energy and color
* Changes to photon attributes for the shaders and lights when caustics, global illumination or final gather is used
* Changes to shadow map settings, including switching from raytraced shadows to shadow maps and back, as well as shadow map format and file changes
* Duplicating a light or object by copying or duplicating a light or object as an instance
* Hiding and unhiding of light source instances
* Light linking and shadow linking
* Rotation of the IBL node.

Object manipulation improvements for mental ray include:

* Interactive creation of objects
* Duplicating a light or object by copying or duplicating a light or object as an instance
* Adding or removing a displacement shader and tuning of the displacement map shading network
* Adding and deleting or topology changes to geometry from the scene
* Changes to the Render Stats and mental ray render stats (under the objects shape node). Previously, onlychanges to the instance render stats (under the objects transform node) were supported.

Options improvements for mental ray include:

* Adding or deleting and tuning of a mental ray approximation node
* Creation of a camera and render camera change.
* Changing camera settings such as the angle of view
* Enabling and tuning the Depth of Field option for the camera node

You can also set IPR specific options such as the verbosity level for error messages by selecting Render > IPR Render Current Frame Options.

Stereoscopic camera:

You can now add a stereoscopic camera to your scene. This allows you to create depth of field with the illusion of a three dimensional interface. Choose between various stereo modes such as anaglyph, checkerboard and horizontal interlace. You can render from the stereo camera and view the render output in any of these stereo modes.

For advanced users, you can also customize your stereoscopic camera by adding a custom stereo rig to your scene.

Elliptical filtering:

Use elliptical filtering to perform high quality texture filtering and anti-aliasing when rendering with mental ray for Maya. Instead of using point sampling, elliptical filtering uses an area (an ellipse) to perform an image lookup. This ellipse contains many pixels, and the pixels are averaged and the average color is returned as a result.

Elliptical filtering in Maya is very simple to use. You can access its controls through the Attribute Editor of your file node.

Render proxies:

Use render proxies with mental ray rendering to manage large scenes with complex geometry. Export your complex object as a mental ray assembly file, then replace it in your scene with a placeholder object that references this file. When you render, the exported object is loaded into memory and rendered with the rest of your scene. Translation time and memory usage are cut down, allowing mental ray for Maya to render large scenes.

Smooth mesh render:

Previously, you could preview a smooth polygon mesh in the scene view by pressing 3. Now you can also render the smooth preview in mental ray for Maya. You can choose to use the same level of smoothing for the 3D viewport preview as for your render. Alternatively, you can also use a different division level for the two.

Particle rendering in mental ray for Maya:

All attributes in the ParticleInfoSampler node are now supported when rendering particles in mental ray for Maya.

new mental ray Render Settings attributes:

new mental ray 3.6 and 3.7 attributes have been added to the Render Settings, including: Importons, Irradiance Particles, Ambient Occlusion and Merge Distance for photons, caustics, and global illumination.

A Render Mode attribute has been added that allows you to render only final gather, or shadow maps, or light maps. In addition, flags that enable you to globally disable light maps and lens shaders have been added. The new BSP2 acceleration method is also available.

Final gathering now accepts multiple final gather map files. New rasterizer controls include: Rasterizer Transparency, Rasterizer Pixel Samples, and Rasterizer use Opacity. New motion blur controls include: Displace Motion Factor and Force Motion Vector Computation.

Render Settings window: Common tab re-organization

The Common tab in the Render Settings window has been re-organized so that there is a clear distinction between the frame and file attributes.

The Frame Buffer Naming and Custom Naming String attributes have been added so that if you are using the OpenEXR file format with the multi-render pass feature, you can customize the naming of the channels in your OpenEXR file.

Texture baking using multiple threads:

You can use the Bake Optimization feature to select between baking using one thread per object or baking using multiple threads per object. The former performs better for baking multiple objects and the latter for baking a single complex piece of geometry.

Improved Maya Help system:

The Maya Help is now faster and more easily searchable than ever before. New features include several new search methods, search highlighting, and the ability to save favorite pages for easy future reference. For more details, see Maya Help overview.

Videos:

Maya nParticles
Maya 2009 introduces the second module built on the highly acclaimed Maya Nucleus unified simulation framework: nParticles. This new Maya Unlimited toolset gives you a precise, efficient workflow for simulating a wide range of complex effects including liquids, clouds, smoke, spray and dust. In this video well specifically look at the stickiness functionality for nParticles and nCloth, nDynamic presets, the fill volume for nParticles feature, nParticle to nCloth interaction, nParticle to nParticle collisions, liquid simulation, as well as blobby and cloud hardware display.

For a complete list of new features and enhancements in Maya 2009, visit www.autodesk.com/maya.

Pricing and Availability
Autodesk anticipates that Maya 2009 will be available in English in October 2008. Maya 2009 will be supported on the Windows and Linux operating systems (64-bit and 32-bit versions), as well as Mac OS X for Intel-based Macintosh and PowerPC computers (32-bit version only).

Autodesk suggested retail pricing is US$1,995* for Maya Complete 2009 (Standalone) and US$4,995* for Maya Unlimited 2009 (Standalone). The upgrade price from Maya Complete 2008 to Maya Complete 2009 is US$899*, and the upgrade price from Maya Unlimited 2008 to Maya Unlimited 2009 is US$1,249*.

Autodesk Subscription with Gold Support is available for purchase simultaneously with the product or upgrade purchase. The Autodesk suggested retail price for Subscription with Gold Support for Maya Unlimited is US$1,495* per year, and for Maya Complete is US$1,295*. Subscription with Gold Support customers qualify for access to the latest software updates, valuable product extensions, telephone and web support, a comprehensive knowledge base and e-Learning materials.